Sunday, 6 April 2014

92-year-old Japanese woman’s amazing collection of painstakingly-crafted traditional Japanese temari handballs has been unveiled to the public for the first time – and it’s all thanks to her granddaughter, Flickr user NanaAkua.

Apparently, her grandmother learned the technique of this traditional Japanese New Year‘s day gift in the 60s and had not stopped creating new ones ever since. Now, she has nearly 500 differently-patterned spheres in her collection, and it doesn’t look like she’s ready to stop anytime soon.

The art of temari began in China and came to Japan in 7th century. It soon became a tradition for grandparents and parents to stitch the balls using silk scraps from old kimonos and give them to their children for New Year’s day. The technique requires an enormous amount of patience, precision, good eye-sight and pretty dexterous fingers. NanaAkua’s grandmother doesn‘t seem to lack any of those, which is why these handmade treasures strike us with awe.